


and worth dying for too

by lyricsandhearts



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen, Religious Imagery, sikenfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 06:01:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricsandhearts/pseuds/lyricsandhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard, and make a wish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and worth dying for too

**Author's Note:**

> heavily based on the works of richard siken.

**i.**

Time doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. Let’s say this.

Time doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to, not here, and you know this, but it’s just the way things have always been. You, with the clocks that never tick. You, with the unanswerable questions.

Let’s say that you’ve been praying – you don’t know what praying is, but you’ve been praying. You are ten years old and unfamiliar with the concept of God, but you have been praying. Not wishing. There’s a difference. Try to remember the word for this. Maybe it will help some things make sense.

Anyway, you’ve been praying, no hands clasped, no kneeling, no nothing. You are sitting on your bed with your hands tracing the cover of a new-old book, eyes closed, breathing in, breathing out. The letters in the title are raised and smooth. They feel like an answer and a thousand more questions all at once.

_Once upon a time,_ says the title, and you open up the book to the first page. It says it again. _Once upon a time._

You mutter it under your breath, quiet, very quiet, hands still tracing, gears in your head still turning. This is a good thing. This is a good thing. This is an answer.

You think this is called a beginning and you are not going to let her take it away from you.

**ii.**

You grow up in Storybrooke.

You are the only one who grows up in Storybrooke.

Pete is a friend of yours – right now, anyway – and he kicks up the dirt with his shoes when he tells you happy birthday. Like he knows something’s wrong. Like he knows he can’t do anything about it.

He is seven and you are seven, until this afternoon, when you will be eight and he will still be seven. And later, you will be nine and he will still be seven. And later, you will be ten, and Pete Barry and Dorothy Green and Esme Agnes and all your other friends from this year will still be seven. They have always been seven. They are always going to be seven.

You’re in the second grade. You know these things. You know that all your friends from kindergarten are still five, and you know that someday you will catch up with the eighth graders, and you know that a boy who tells his mother that he notices these things is as good as grounded, but you tell her anyway. You tell her that you don’t like it that the number of candles on your birthday cake changes every year.

And she looks at you for a second, maybe scared, maybe amused, then laughs and says, _well, Henry, that’s just growing up._

It isn’t growing up, you think. It’s growing around.

**iii.**

You are still ten years old. You are beginning to understand God.

Not God, per se, not like people outside Storybrooke think of God – there’s not a single church in the entire town and you’ve never laid hands on a Bible, though, oh, you’ve been praying and praying and praying – but God is never what you think He’s supposed to be, now, is He?

So let’s say God is a woman scorned and hell is her very own invention. Let’s say God is a coward who goes too far and gets too much. Let’s say God is two people, a warrior and a not-quite-prince, and let’s say they’re always finding each other because the losing isn’t the important part.

God is supposed to know everything, right, so maybe we should say God is ten years old and He is very, very tired of being told he is inventing things because He wants to be rescued. Let’s say the Bible was not written through Him but given to Him by a young, unwitting mother. Something is backwards here, and you aren’t sure what.

Let’s say the book isn’t a Bible after all. Let’s say the book itself is God instead. You would rather be a prophet anyway.

Besides, the only thing that really matters here is the one person who is most definitely not God, because she is going to save everyone. You just have to find her first.

(You are starting to think there’s a reason no savior in any book you’ve read ever has a kid. Nobody cares about the son _of_ the son of man, especially when the son of man is really a daughter.)

**iv.**

History repeats itself. Somebody says this.

Whoever it was, they were wrong. History doesn’t repeat itself; history just forgets. You are willing to forgive.

History is a young woman with wanderlust and a red cloak, history is a man with a constant chirping in his head and in his blood. History wipes itself clean, very gradually, very often. This is the reason no one notices. This is the curse. 

And this is your end of the curse: living to see it all float right past everyone’s eyes and being almost helpless to make them see.

Almost.

There’s a war on the horizon, you know this – you are about to tear your own world down and replace it with something bigger. Something better. That’s all you’ve ever wanted, and it’s coming. It has to be.

You will become something else, a Henry that is not a Henry, a Henry with a needle and thread, sewing up the holes nobody ever saw in the first place. Right now you’re just tearing them open. There is a war on the horizon. You are going to be prepared if it kills you.

(Lest we forget, the son of the daughter of man is just as important as anyone else, maybe more – in the name of the Mother, Father, and True Love’s Kiss. Amen.)

**v.**

You find her, and she says, _No, Henry, let’s not do this,_ and you try to say, _I owe you everything,_ but it just comes out as _please_.

Maybe you can try again when you’re older.

The war is no longer on the horizon. It’s headed straight for you, all of it, every bit, and it’s everything you’ve ever wanted and you need her, and you need this – you have all the answers. Most of the answers. Some of the answers, fine, but she needs to come with you.

You keep doing it. You keep saying, _until we get it right_. Are you ever gonna get it right?

When the war comes, it’ll be a Western, Henry. A downright shoot-em-up. God made you a graveyard and now you have to lie in it.

The book might be God, but you understand the book, all right? And you don’t have to follow the rules of things you understand. Rules are made to be broken. Rules aren’t necessarily good. Remember this.

You’re a good kid, Henry. Good will always come out on top.


End file.
